Wounded Militiaman, by Francisco Mateos, is a propagandistic painting that denounces the rawness of the Civil War and exalts solidarity among soldiers. It was created in a context of urgency, with precarious means and reused materials, with the aspiration of featuring in the Spanish Republic Pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition of Paris, where Picasso's Guernica was also exhibited. But since its return from Paris in 1938, it has never been shown: during the Francoist dictatorship, because it was part of the silenced art of the defeated and, later, because its condition had deteriorated hugely. Its decline is irreversible and progressive, with damage that prevents any recovery of the original appearance. Consequently, we propose recreating its original appearance using AI-generated images with a view to restoring, as far as possible, the expressive power of the message that the artist intended to convey.

Francisco Mateos united two of his paintings to obtain a larger canvas to depict Wounded Militiaman. This reuse, combined with the poor quality of the materials used and a probably hurried process, resulted in chemical reactions that cause the paint to continuously flake off. This deterioration cannot be repaired and the damage cannot be restored without resorting to invention or the introduction of foreign material. For this reason, the work is displayed at an angle and is kept under constant observation.